The Way We Were

I would like to think that my mother and father were very happy when I was born. They were young, I was their first child, and I turned out to be everything thing they had hoped for: beautiful, brilliant, and humble. I imagine they were excited about beginning the adventure of parenthood.  I sometimes wonder how their attitude might have changed had they known that they would be parenting for the next 31 years, a timeline more suitable for growing trees than raising their five children.  

My brother K.C. and I often lament about how “it used to be,” the way Julie Andrews must feel when she goes to the movies. 

“They never would have let us have that when we were kids,” K.C. once commented, gesturing towards the video game system hooked up to a massive television on the wall.

“Are you kidding? They never even let us have cable!” I added, with a sage nod of the head.

We consider our childhood to be something that was to be survived, like an initiation process.  Our elementary years were happy, but tempered with the rigidity of a West Point cadet in basic training. When we see what pushovers our parents have become, we can only shake our heads and talk about the old days. The way things used to be.

Roughly every two years after my birth, a new sibling joined our household. This became increasingly inconvenient as these unsolicited family members forced me to share the love, attention, and economic resources of my parents. Not to mention the long-term ramifications of my inheritance getting split into splinters with each new precious baby that came through the front door.

By the time I was seven, my home was invaded by two strange boys Mom and Dad referred to as “brothers,” and a truly terrifying small girl they christened my “little sister.” With four kids under the age of eight, my parents began to panic and quickly switched gears from family unit to military compound. They called an emergency all-night planning session, frantically reading through parenting manuals and military textbooks in equal amounts. The next morning they bombarded us with rules, regulations and procedures as if we had enlisted in the armed forced.

The first order of business was to limit the amount of time they actually spent with us. My parents didn’t believe in sending us to public school or day care, but they had no qualms about making us spend eleven hours a day in our bedrooms. Not unlike a high-security prison, we had to report to our room every day between the hours of 9:00 PM until 8:00 AM.  I remember trying to sleep as long as possible to try to pass the time, but you can’t help but wake up early when you’re a kid. It was a hell of a long time to be kept in one place.

Staying in our bedrooms may not have been so bad if we didn’t have to share them. Crammed into 200 square feet with a roommate assigned to us at birth. It wasn’t because we didn’t have the extra space either, an entire bedroom and bathroom lay untouched at the far end of the house but my mother refused to let any of us use them.

“You’re going to share a room for the rest of your life, so you might as well just get used to it.” My mother would tell us.

“You’ll have a roommate in college and then you’ll get married.” She continued, eyebrows raised, daring us to question this inexorable logic.

They didn’t actually lock the door to keep us in our bedrooms, they didn’t have to. My parents taught us early on that crossing the threshold wasn’t an option.

When I was two and had graduated from caged crib to the freedom of a single bed, I found it much easier to toddle out of my room to visit my parents at irregular intervals throughout the night. My father grew tired of having his sleep interrupted by his disobedient daughter. He solved the problem by placing the instrument of punishment (a wooden spoon) on the floor outside my bedroom door. My father did not believe in baby talk or making deals with children.

“If you get out of your room,” he told me, his voice stern and unyielding, “you better bring the spoon with you, because you’re going to get spanked.”

I was small but I wasn’t stupid. And I might not have totally understood everything he said to me, but I was well aware of the power of the spoon. I never left my room again.

Corporal punishment was a prevalent piece of my childhood, mostly because it proved to be a particularly effective tool for keeping all of us in line. I was spanked often, but never in public. If pushed too far, one of my parents would quietly murmur, “You’re getting spanked when we get home.” And that was the worst. I wished they would have just spanked me then and there and gotten it over. Instead I had the dark knowledge of impending doom rising in my chest, like a prisoner whiling the hours away on Death Row.

I would try to be really good after my sentencing, so good that maybe they would forget about spanking me. Or even decide I learned my lesson without the aid of a few swift smacks to my backside. But they never forgot, and they never changed their minds.

My parents implemented a process for everything. When my mom took us inside a store, standard procedure was that we follow her in a single-file line, like a row of ducklings. We hated going on errands and we begged to be left at home but this was before the days of cell phones. My mother relished any time away from us, but she was hesitant to leave four kids alone in her house. The compromise was that we were allowed to stay locked up in the minivan, kind of like a mobile storage locker full of small children.

Of course, with so many kids, the simple act of loading us all up into a car could be a battle. To discourage fighting over who sat shotgun, my mother assigned us specific days for the privilege. My days were Mondays and Thursdays, unless it was your birthday on which you got to sit in the front seat no matter whose day it was. Sliding into that front seat on a Tuesday, K.C. protesting bitterly from the back seat, was one of the most satisfying moments I have ever known.

My mother also assigned days for who got to sit in the brown chair in the living room, who had to feed the cats, who had to empty the dishwasher, for everything.

My father was of the persuasion that children were to be seen and not heard. In the unlikely event we did need to communicate with him directly, there was a specific method as to which we addressed him.

If wanted to get the attention of my parents when they were talking to someone else, we were to apply a polite tap on one shoulder, much like a gentleman interrupting a dancing couple, and wait in silence until they chose to acknowledge us. Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn’t. But we knew enough to not tap twice.

Talking back was suicide, but my father did implement a system when we disagreed with one of their rulings.

“Excuse me sir, may I appeal?” we were trained to say. But most of the time, he just answered, “no.”

That was the way we were, and that was the way I thought we would always be. But I was wrong.

I first noticed the changes after my freshman year of college. I returned home to find every single one of my siblings installed in their own bedroom.  

“It was just easier,” my mother said “and we have the room…” she shrugged her shoulders as her voice trailed off.

 I can’t say I was entirely surprised. I remember walking through a busy parking lot with my family. My father held Anna’s hand as we maneuvered through the traffic.

“Dad, let’s skip,” the four-year-old said.

“Skip?” my father asked. I wasn’t entirely sure he knew what that was, and I was certain he didn’t know how to do it. My father walks to business meetings, he sits at desks, he runs at the gym, but he does not skip.

“Yeah, let’s skip,” exclaimed the little cherub.

And they did. Hand-in-hand, skipping through the parking lot. In that moment I knew, we all knew; Anna had it made.

Bedtimes are only a friendly suggestion to Anna rather than a strict guideline. When she was five or six, she would play along with my parents’ little game, dressing in pajamas and even turning off the lights. But as soon as Mom and Dad went to bed the kindergartener would dig a flashlight out of her nightstand and start roaming the house. On more than one occasion when I was home from college, I would see Anna crawling down a dark hallway, a Maglite clutched in her little hand. Sometimes sneaking into the kitchen for a quick snack, or trekking on hands and knees to the living room to watch a late night showing of a Jonas Brothers concert on TV.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed,” I asked, feeling like perhaps something should be done about small children roaming around unattended in the dark hours of the night.

“Yes, but I’m just going to get a bowl of cereal,” Anna whispered, “Please don’t tell mom and dad,” she begged. Clearly terrified of our elderly parents, although I wasn’t sure why. The lions had lost their teeth years ago.

After 14 years, Anna has finally reached the required weight limit to legally sit in the front seat of the suburban, but she prefers to lounge in the back, like a celebrity being chauffeured to a premiere. DVD players are installed in the back of the head rests so Anna may turn on a couple movies. Rear-controlled air conditioning ensures her trips to and from school are always at the correct temperature. She throws her backpack in the vast empty space of the backseat, she props her little feat up on a captain chair. She tells my mom to make a stop by Bahama Bucks so she can pick up a smoothie and then whips out the cell phone she’s had since the age of ten so she can update her Facebook status to “rough day.”

To the younger siblings in my family, spanking is a foreign concept, but for Anna, it is virtually unheard of. I think she has been spanked a total of two, maybe three times.

 “Anna is just one of those kids you can reason with,” my dad once told me. “You don’t have to spank her.”

Year by year, I watched the fortress of rules my parents had built disintegrate, like a sand castle dissolving in the waves of the incoming tide. These young kids know nothing of bed times, or spankings, or even sharing rooms. These are only distant memories, relics of a past life.

When I think of the hardships I endured, I now realize that my childhood was the bulldozer. Paving the road for the easy street Anna cruises on in the cushy back seat of the suburban.